The death of the sex comedy

After a few years in which she has been largely absent from cinemas – her appearance in Netflix’s climate-change black comedy Don’t Look Up aside – Jennifer Lawrence is returning with, of all things, a raunchy sex comedy, with the punning title No Hard Feelings. It has earned an R-rating in the US and 15 in the UK, and judging by its marketing materials, it is a 21st-century spin on Tom Cruise’s star-making role in Risky Business, focusing on an older woman (yes, Lawrence, at 32, is now classed as such by Hollywood) who is hired by a family via Craigslist to ‘date’ their socially awkward 19-year-old son Percy, ‘date him hard’, and thus introduce him to the adult world.

The promotional posters have the words ‘pretty’ and ‘awkward’ above, respectively, Lawrence and her co-star, Andrew Barth Feldman, and the trailer promises a near-the-knuckle raunchfest of sorts. It is not likely to win Lawrence her second Best Actress Oscar, but it looks to be amusingly disposable entertainment, no doubt with the obligatory feminist twist that these pictures now have to contain.